My solution to any trouble, any loneliness
Herman Hesse, on trees
Dear You,
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that I’m always talking about how much I love trees, especially the sound of wind in the leaves. My all-purpose solution to any trouble, any loneliness, any lapse in appreciation of the world, is to go visit the trees. And when I’m full of joy, calm, and contentment…I visit the trees.
Over the years, people have told me to read Herman Hesse on this topic, and for some reason, I never got around to this. Until now, when I came across this excerpt, via the great Maria Popova’s Marginalian newsletter. It’s so glorious that I just want to share it with you, whole - and urge you to read every precious word:
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts… Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
-Hermann Hesse
I’m going to give you those last precious lines again:
“Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”
*
As usual, I’d love to know what you think.
*What do you think of this excerpt?
*Is there an aspect of nature that especially resonates for you?
*Do you ever experience this wanting to be nothing except what you are?
Please leave a comment below!
This was really beautiful. It makes a lot of sense to me at this phase in my life. I've recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness and all I want to do is go for walks in forests and be surrounded by trees. It's so calming and healing to me at this time. I guess I'm learning to live in this new body of mine. I must read more of Hermann Hesse's writing next time I go. Find a tree and sit under it for a while to read in the dappled light, bliss 💕
Not long before my mom died, and when she was no longer 100% cognitively aware, we were sitting outside when she looked up at a tree with its upper branches swaying in the breeze and said, "I love that." So these words from Hesse filled my heart:
"... when I hear trees rustling in the wind ... If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother."
Thank you, Susan.